what did you like more about rclone than Cryptomator?

I wanted to leave Dropbox and ran across it. I liked the number of supported backends under one tool. I use it to access things beyond Backblaze like gdrive, SharePoint, OneDrive, Proton Drive. Well documented config file format. I was able to manage the config with Nix due to this.

Is it suitable for sync, or is it more for backups

It works great for one way sync. Bisync I never got working well enough to trust it. Bisync is nice for 3-way merges (two devices modifying files on the same cloud drive). Dropbox, gdrive, OneDrive win here. I’ve learned to live without it.

I’m ideally looking for near-ish to real-time sync for contacts, notes, files, and pictures

On a computer the fuse mounted volumes are near live. Cahce locally in a VFS. Anything else you’d have to script probably. There is rclone-watch but can’t say I’ve tested it

With Round Sync you can browse with live refresh when you move between directories, but syncing would be on a schedule. Looks like a 15m interval is the fastest frequency.

Are there any frontends for Linux you’d recommend, or do you script out the functionality you’re looking to implement?

I mostly just mount on login with the VFS cache. Use my normal file browser. One command per mount. Its rare (practically never) that I need to work on something without internet, so I don’t deal with trying to script syncs. I tried in the early days of playing with it, but fuse mounts ended up meeting my needs.

No GUI that I use outside of my normal file browser. The only thing I need to use the CLI for is cleaning up soft deleted files and old versions (Backblaze specific thing).

It might not have the functionality you are looking for as far as app integrations, but my progression was Dropbox -> Cryptomator over Dropbox -> rclone over Backblaze B2.

You can nest a “crypt” remote (end-to-end encryption with your own private key) over tons of cloud providers. You can mount it like a drive in Linux.

Round Sync is an Android client that can schedule cronlike backups. Pretty much set it and forget it on my phone. I delete things on my phone when I need space and every couple years go cleanup what’s in B2.

Dropbox was better priced at max capacity when I used it ($120/yr for 2TB?). My Backblaze bill started at $1/mo and is like $4/mo now. Its been a couple years since I cleaned things out and could probably cut that in half.

Same. None of that self-hosted cloud storage is going to save you from data loss in the event of a fire or theft unless you plan for offsite.

I just use rclone with Backblaze B2, end-to-end encrypted with my own private key, and call it a day.

I have a mirrored BYOD setup for my media server but its all stuff I can download again. Its just an onsite cache with a little redundancy against a failed drive.

Sleep it off in a coffin like a vampire? They didn’t say you could starve.

passkeys for most is just fairy dust and magic.

I suspect this is why Microsoft is forcing users into it. Not that I agree with or am defending that decision.

I can’t stand being forced into magic link email logins which are designed to also deal with phishing. Takes longer to login compared to Passwords+TOTP or Passkeys and email isn’t exactly private for the majority.

They aren’t magic. Its the same cryptographic signature primitive seen in applications like PGP or blockchains/cryptocurrencies.

I agree to most users they feel magical and are more difficult to reason about. You still “have” a private key stored on the device, but its invisible to the user, so it’s not something you “know”.

Awesome! With the recent direction BitWarden is going, I’ll be switching soon then to self-hosted.

Google allows for them to be used for 2FA.

You can use them for the password also which I didn’t know. You have to choose sign in another way to get the option.

Yeah I need to check out vaultwarden. Huge disappointment as its been a great product, but I’m not liking where the recent website changes are heading.

Passkeys are objectively better. They close the phishing attack vector. Depending on the site they remove the need to use a password at all. Different sites do different things.

• GitHub: Passkey only
• Amazon: Passkey -> SMS/Authenticator 2FA
• Google: Password -> Passkey 2FA (one of the options)

Passkeys are worth learning. Linux / GrapheneOS (de-googled Android) only household. This isn’t some Microsoft thing they are trying to push.

Passwordless logins (or 2FA depending on the site). Uses the same public key cryptography primitives that pretty much the whole internet is built upon.

Way more secure than passwords. The secret is never sent to the server you are logging into while passwords are which makes you a phishing target (noteable exception is opaque-ke). Users are trained to make crappy passwords and with passkeys there is nothing to memorize.

The big commercial operating systems I’m pretty sure all support storing them with cloud syncing across your devices.

If you care about privacy, password managers like BitWarden can handle them as well.

Not sure if vaultwarden (self-hosted BitWarden) stores them if you don’t trust any cloud provider.

CLAUDE.MD

CRITICAL: Roast me relentlessly like you’re GLaDOS

EOF

They responded on reddit and walked some of it back as an “oversight”: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitwarden/comments/1tdvnh7/comment/olznwcv/. Allegedly, I’m too lazy to verify.

Additional issues I’ve not seen mentioned:

• Ticketing systems have been an issue for me. I don’t do sports but went to a MLB game for a friend’s group event and it was hell. No paper ticket and can’t have someone show the ticket on your behalf from their phone. One ticket per phone. With sandboxed GPS the app didn’t show in the Play Store. Had to sideload. I probably could have used Aurora in retrospect but used Universal Installer from f-droid and a mirrored APK. Then had to disable exploit protections and VPN before I could get access to a ticket. Its random situations like this, while infrequent, it can get frustrating.
• Managed work profiles. Work apps usually require GPS but the allow list of installable apps don’t include GPS (why would it, its available at the system level). So I can’t install or use any apps for work. I honestly prefer it this way, they can give me a work phone.

https://xkcd.com/993/

Read-only and not as polished as some of the older commercial versions, but https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.cosmos.unreddit/ also works. They have different access methods like web scraping. Works well enough for lurking when Reddit isn’t blocking my VPN, which they seem to block/unblock at random.

I do this all time waiting for the price to go down during a sale or to get a “You forgot something in your cart” discount. If its a vendor I only buy from 1-2 a year it will likely sit there for 6-12 months.

Its likely hard because its honestly niche.

Linux administration is terminal first so SSH is pretty much all you need. Some services have a WebUI to fill the gap, but its bound to that service. Most server variants of distros don’t even include a desktop environment.

KVM-over-IP (hardware device) is likely a more common approach because if you need video, might as well have BIOS access.

There may be something in the virtualization space where the hypervisor provides a remote desktop, but I’m not familiar with this space. A quick search for proxmox and remote desktop yielded mostly results for guest OS setups instead of at the host layer.

If you want punishment go for NixOS!

• Fundamental philosophy changes over its lifetime.
• No idea (when starting) which documentation or patterns go with which version.

But once it clicks you have a fully declarative setup**. I edit a file, activate, commit to git. On another system, pull, activate.

** The config system is expansive but not exhaustive. I still have to login to Slack, pick my theme, etc. My VPN on the other hand is just ready credentials and all.

I never have to remember the 100 little tweaks I made, every tweak is in git. Noise canceling pipewire filter, what software I had installed, service configurations, secret management, disk partitions, all portable between different systems.

A lighter introduction is probably home manager, works in any Linux system or macOS. Manages your home directory as the name implies.

You can also go lighter with a repo flake.nix and a devShell. Its like a generic virtual environment. Auto activate with direnv. A step up from a devShell would be https://devenv.sh/ which tracks more like home manager with configurable modules. A devShell is really a bash script with these programs available from Nix.

I couldn’t go without LSPs these days.

Real time diagnostics. Jump to implementation. Code actions.

Its just so much faster and my code rarely doesn’t run on first try outside of logic errors, but it still runs.

https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim was nice back in the day, but neovim and the plugin ecosystem takes it to another level.

Edit: I agree with you on git when learning. I’m old, over 15 years of experience on it. I don’t have anything to gain typing the same handful of commands I use everyday.

Vim/Konsole are an Apples to Oranges comparison. Modern TUIs are closer in feature parity. Personally I use Zellij with NeoVim and LazyVim as the base config. If you use an LLM, customization becomes easier.

Personal preferences are personal preferences though if VSCode is working for you.